


Amid the Bruises and the Red Lights

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Series: beggars would ride [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Genderswap, girl!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-23
Updated: 2007-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the oldest trick in the book, and she'll do it if it keeps him with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amid the Bruises and the Red Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Laura for the beta. Title from Thea Gilmore

Six weeks down, and Dean's acting like there's nothing wrong, like he's having the time of his life, and she's ready to kill him herself, for bringing her back. For acting like it's no big deal.

He's sprawled on his belly, dead to the world, and the thought chills her; she has to sit down next to him, put a hand on his back so she can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing. She slides into the bed beside him, and he shifts over with a sleepy mutter, not waking, used to her presence again.

She lies there awake, running through everything she knows, everything she's learned, in the weeks since he brought her back. Bobby and Ellen are working on it, as well, and between the three of them, she's positive they can come up with something to keep Dean's soul from the greedy clutches of hell. But in the meantime, she's got to come up with something that will make him _want_ to stick around, exhausted as he is by everything that's happened in the past year. The thought of him dying steals the breath from her lungs--she's woken up gasping in terror nearly every night since she found out, haunted by the thought of a future more horrifying than any nightmare she's had since the one about Jess on the ceiling. She's not going to ignore the warnings this time, even if they aren't true visions. She's going to save him. She's just got to figure out how.

She nestles in close, though they're not really big on spooning, and he curls around her, breath warm and stale on the back of her neck. She holds his hand over her heart and prays, murmuring in Latin when English doesn't feel urgent enough, running through every prayer she knows and a few she's made up for the occasion, and falls asleep before she's finished, exhausted.

He wakes her with sloppy warm kisses and his hand between her legs, and though she's not generally enthusiastic about first thing in the morning sex, she doesn't complain, just rolls over and opens to him, letting him cover her and press her down into the mattress, drawing strength from the fierce beat of his heart and the heat of his body.

He reaches for a condom--her prescription ran out two weeks after the debacle with the shifter in Milwaukee, and she hasn't been willing to risk trying to refill it with the FBI on their trail--and she stops him.

"Sam?"

"S'okay," she says. "I want to."

He looks like he's going to argue, so she reaches down between them, guides him inside her, skin on skin, nothing in between, and even though her body is half-asleep and she knows her orgasm, when it comes, will be a soft, muted thing, it's still the best thing she's ever felt, the hot sweet push of Dean's dick into her cunt, and the slick hot slide of his tongue into her mouth.

She wraps herself around him and holds him close as he fucks her, gentle and slow, like they have all the time in the world. She feels something well up in her chest--fear, love, grief, some combination of the three--and has to close her eyes, hot tears leaking from the corners as he comes deep inside her.

"Shh, baby, it's okay," he whispers against her mouth, and she believes him, even as she thinks how fucked up it is that he's still reassuring her, even now.

He slides down the bed to clean her up, and she thinks about it, about carrying some piece of him inside of her, about new life sparking, and God, it's the oldest trick in the book, but she'll do it if it keeps him with her.

She doesn't say anything as the days go by, turn into weeks since she had the idea, but she can't stop thinking about it. She's still trying to figure out if she can do it, if she _wants_ to do it. If he'll want to do it, too.

Weeks pass, another month torn out of the calendar already, and the next half gone while she researches and thinks, too much time lost as they hunt down one demon after another, all of them taunting her with what they'll do to Dean when he lands in hell. That makes her even more desperate, more frantic--she hyperventilates more than once, finds herself breathing into a paper bag while Dean's out getting breakfast or filling the car with gas.

There's strain around his eyes now, too, like he knows she's not dealing, and that's the part that's wearing him out. The two of them lie awake at night, breathing in time, the only way she breathes easy anymore, his hand stroking absently through her hair, and she can't take it anymore, just blurts it out.

"I want to have a baby." Her voice is loud in the darkness, and she can hear a car pull into the parking lot two rooms down in the silence left by her words. Dean's hand snags in her hair, and when he yanks it away, his ring catches, pulling free with several strands of blonde hair attached. "Fuck, Dean, that hurts."

"Are you insane?" Even in the dimness of the room, lit only by the blue flicker of the muted television neither of them remembered to turn off, the incredulous look he gives her makes her giggle.

She shrugs, grinning. "Probably. Seems to run in the family."

"Okay. Sam. I--" He stops, swallows hard. "Let's look at all the reasons that's the worst idea you've ever had, and that's including that time with the American cheese and jelly sandwiches." He holds up a hand, starts ticking things off, like she hasn't already thought of all of them and dismissed them. "There's the whole incest thing," and that's how she knows he's spooked, because in all the time they've been fucking, he's never said the word, not once, not even when she'd tried to goad him into it, back when she was sixteen and he was still resisting the inevitable pull between them. "I don't know the biology of it but--"

"Dad and Mom weren't related. One generation shouldn't be a problem," she says. She'd done the research years ago, when they first started this and she wanted to know why everything she felt, everything she wanted, was supposed to be wrong. "We have good genes."

He huffs a small, mirthless laugh. "And you can't hunt if you're pregnant, or carting around a baby. We're fighting a war, here, Sam. A guerilla war, but still, we're on the front lines. It's not safe and it's not smart."

"Dad did it."

"You spent your life fighting with the man, and now you're gonna haul him out as an example of good parenting?"

She catches her breath, still shocked to hear him say anything the least bit critical of their father, even--maybe especially--now. "No, but--We could do this, Dean. I know we could." She cups his cheek, gives him a soft kiss. "You'd be the best dad ever."

He flashes a brief smile in thanks, but there's no mercy in his next words. "Then there's the fact that I'm going to be dead in--"

"Don't you dare say it," she says, pushing away so she can sit up, elbowing him in the chest in the process, and savagely satisfied by the grunt of pain that wrings out of him. "I'm going to fix this, and you're going to be around for a long, long time."

He sits up behind her, puts his hand on her shoulder and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "Sam, I--"

"No, Dean. I'm serious. I need you to believe in me. I need you to _want_ this." She turns to face him, looks him right in the eye. "I need you to want to stay with me. Because if you don't, then fuck, why even bother? If you're not going to fight, why not just lie here until the hellhounds come?"

"That's not what I mean."

She ignores him, though, always does when he says stupid shit she doesn't want to hear. "And if the fact that I need you isn't enough to keep you, then maybe having a kid is."

He exhales noisily, annoyed. "That's a crappy reason to have a kid."

"Is it?" She shrugs him off, gets up and starts pacing. He mutters something about Jerry Springer but she keeps talking over him. "I don't care. If it keeps you here, if it makes you want to live--"

That's enough to get him up off the bed, too. "What makes you think I don't?"

She whirls around to face him, lets everything she's feeling show in her voice, doesn't try to stop it from shaking. "The fact that you're _happy_ in a way I haven't seen you since, God, I can't even remember, maybe since you came to get me at school. The fact that you haven't done a goddamned thing to help me figure out a way to get out of this."

He rubs a hand across his face, through his hair. Shakes his head. "I can't, Sam. I told you, the terms of the deal--if I try to welsh on it or weasel out of it, that's it for you. Do you get that? If I help you, I'm just signing your death warrant."

She crosses her arms over her chest, scowls at him. "Then maybe you shouldn't have brought me back at all." She knows it's not fair, knows this is what he's been carrying since Dad made the deal for him, and the weight of it nearly broke him completely, but she can't help it.

He grabs her, fingers gripping her shoulders hard enough to bruise. "That was never an option."

"Dean, I can't--"

"You can, Sammy. You have. You spent all that time in California without me. You don't need me, not like--"

"That was different. I knew you were there. You were always there. I knew I could always call, and you'd be there if I needed you." She clutches at him, hands fisting in his shirt. "I can't believe you think I don't need you, that you don't think Dad and I both needed you. He never would have survived without you, Dean. And I--"

"You'll survive, baby. You're strong." He buries his face in her hair for a second, and she can feel him breathing in. "Strongest person I know."

She forces herself not to cry, swallows down the tears, but can't stop the words from spilling out. "But I don't want to, Dean. I don't want to do it without you." She knows she sounds like the spoiled brat he's always accusing her of being, but she doesn't know what else she can say, and she's willing to say or do anything to make him want to stay, to let her save him the way he's always saved her.

"And I don't want to leave you, Sam. Don't you ever think I do. But if it happens--even without the deal, this job is dangerous, and anything could happen--I need to know you're gonna be fine without me."

She refuses to think about the truth of that; instead, she pulls him close and kisses him, desperation and fear and love all mixed up in the hard thrust of her tongue into his mouth, and he kisses her back, hands tangling in her hair, pulling too tight, edging the growing need in her veins with just enough pain to make it sweeter.

When she pulls back, chest heaving, he's looking at her with so much intensity that she can't catch her breath, has to hold onto him so she doesn't go to her knees from everything she's feeling, dancing right on the frayed edges of her nerves.

"Okay," he says, and he does go to his knees, presses his face against her belly, kissing her through the thin material of her t-shirt. "Okay."

"Okay, what?" she asks warily.

He rises gracefully, so damn beautiful it makes her heart hurt and her cunt wet, and lifts the hem of her t-shirt up. She raises her arms automatically, lets him pull it over her head so she's naked except for her underwear, and he stares at her like he's starving and she's the first food he's seen in weeks. His mouth curves in a grin, dangerous and wicked, and full of promises she's going to make him keep.

"After you figure out how to save my soul, if you still want to, we can talk about having a baby." He pushes her hair off her forehead, presses a kiss there, another silent vow binding them together.

His hands are gentle on her hips, thumbs hooked in the waistband of her panties and then pulling them down so she can step out of them. He sits on the end of the bed and hauls her into his lap, laughing into her mouth, and she feels like she can breathe again, and she can taste hope on his breath.

End

~*~


End file.
